On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 4: The Cutouts

A cutout is a link ...

 [Previous: Part 1: 28 Pages | Part 2: No Vortex | Part 3: The Lawsuit ]

The term "cutout" is intelligence jargon for a special sort of role that must be played in covert operations. A cutout acts as a go-between, bringing support and instructions from the planners to the perpetrators.

By doing this, the cutout becomes a link in the chain of evidence that connects the planners to the perpetrators. And the cutout's most important job is to be "cut out" of the chain if and when necessary.

The timely disappearance of a cutout can break the trail that would otherwise lead back from the crime to the people who wanted it to happen. By making cutouts disappear, covert operators can maintain a certain level of "plausible denial," even if the perpetrators are caught in the act, or tracked down later.

In the case of 9/11, where the "hijackers" were apparently patsies who were intended to be caught, the role of the cutouts was especially important -- and especially dangerous.

... in the chain of evidence that connects ...

It is sad and strange and very pathetic that we still know so little about the nature of the 9/11 attacks. It's bad enough that that we don't know who did it. But we don't even know what they did! That complicates everything except the government story, the litigation based on it, and the mainstream coverage.

We do know a little bit, and presumably Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch, Bob Graham know a lot more, about some well-connected Saudis who helped to put the patsies in a position from which they could take the blame -- and who then disappeared!

From Paul Sperry in the New York Post [or here]:

Some information already has leaked from the [28 redacted pages], which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally....

LOS ANGELES: Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy allegedly arranged for an advance team to receive two of the Saudi hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — as they arrived at LAX in 2000. One of the advance men, Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent, left the LA consulate and met the hijackers at a local restaurant. (Bayoumi left the United States two months before the attacks, while Thumairy was deported back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11.)

... the planners of a covert operation ...

Watch how this happens. The timing is very interesting. al-Bayoumi, who was directly connected with the patsies, disappeared two months before the attacks. Thumairy, who was connected to al-Bayoumi but not to the patsies directly, didn't disappear until after the attacks.

SAN DIEGO: Bayoumi and another suspected Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, set up essentially a forward operating base in San Diego for the hijackers after leaving LA. They were provided rooms, rent and phones, as well as private meetings with an American al Qaeda cleric who would later become notorious, Anwar al-Awlaki, at a Saudi-funded mosque he ran in a nearby suburb. They were also feted at a welcoming party. (Bassnan also fled the United States just before the attacks.)

Bassnan (sometimes also "Basnan"), who was also in direct contact with the patsies, also disappeared before the attacks.

WASHINGTON: Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling some $130,000 to Bassnan while he was handling the hijackers. Though the Bandars claim the checks were “welfare” for Bassnan’s supposedly ill wife, the money nonetheless made its way into the hijackers’ hands.

Other al Qaeda funding was traced back to Bandar and his embassy — so much so that by 2004 Riggs Bank of Washington had dropped the Saudis as a client. The next year, as a number of embassy employees popped up in terror probes, Riyadh recalled Bandar.

“Our investigations contributed to the ambassador’s departure,” an investigator who worked with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington told me, though Bandar says he left for “personal reasons.”

... to the perpetrators.

Prince Bandar, who as Ambassador was under diplomatic immunity, didn't have to disappear until he could leave for "personal reasons" by being "recalled."

FALLS CHURCH, VA.: In 2001, Awlaki and the San Diego hijackers turned up together again — this time at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a Pentagon-area mosque built with funds from the Saudi Embassy. Awlaki was recruited 3,000 miles away to head the mosque. As its imam, Awlaki helped the hijackers, who showed up at his doorstep as if on cue. He tasked a handler to help them acquire apartments and IDs before they attacked the Pentagon.

Awlaki worked closely with the Saudi Embassy. He lectured at a Saudi Islamic think tank in Merrifield, Va., chaired by Bandar. Saudi travel itinerary documents I’ve obtained show he also served as the ­official imam on Saudi Embassy-sponsored trips to Mecca and tours of Saudi holy sites. Most suspiciously, though, Awlaki fled the United States on a Saudi jet about a year after 9/11.

A cutout's most important job...

Awlaki needed a lot of help to disappear ... and he got it! Where do you suppose it came from?

As I first reported in my book, “Infiltration,” quoting from classified US documents, the Saudi-sponsored cleric was briefly detained at JFK before being released into the custody of a “Saudi representative.” A federal warrant for Awlaki’s arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the previous day.

This timing is also very interesting, is it not? Normally, federal arrest warrants are not mysteriously withdrawn -- let alone just in time to facilitate a disappearance!

HERNDON, VA.: On the eve of the attacks, top Saudi government official Saleh Hussayen checked into the same Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport as three of the Saudi hijackers who targeted the Pentagon. Hussayen had left a nearby hotel to move into the hijackers’ hotel. Did he meet with them? The FBI never found out. They let him go after he “feigned a seizure,” one agent recalled.

Hussayen "feigned a seizure" to disappear. Such a clever lad. He has even disappeared from the official story, as did they all, according to Sperry:

Hussayen’s name doesn’t appear in the separate 9/11 Commission Report, which clears the Saudis.

Poof! They're all cleared! Isn't that amazing?

Guess who else got "help" from a high-ranking Saudi, who then disappeared?

SARASOTA, FLA.: 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited a home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd. FBI agents investigating the connection in 2002 found that visitor logs for the gated community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers. Just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi luxury home was abandoned. Three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, were left in the driveway. Inside, opulent furniture was untouched.

... is to disappear ...

Esam Ghazzawi disappeared in a big hurry. That's the way it goes sometimes, especially when you're in contact with the "ringleader."

Some folks have more pull than others, apparently. The cutouts got away, but the senator chasing them ran into a stone wall.

Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He says it’s a “coverup.”

Of course it's a coverup. Sperry asks:

Is the federal government protecting the Saudis?

But that question is beneath consideration, is it not? The interesting question is "Why is the federal government protecting the Saudis?" But perhaps Sperry can't ask such questions in the New York Post. He does say this, though:

Case agents tell me they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House and FBI responses to the attacks.

... and they all did! Isn't that amazing?

Yes, curious indeed ... unless you prefer a stronger word. In my view, there is no plausible explanation, unless people in very high places wanted it to happen this way.

Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he met with the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while discussing the attacks.

And that's how all the cutouts disappeared. Funny how that worked, isn't it? -- probably just the way it was supposed to.

Some of the cutouts didn't disappear safely enough. As Sperry notes,

A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

We also know about some other cutouts who didn't disappear fast enough. We'll talk about them soon.

[to be continued]

Click here if you wish to join the discussion.

On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 3: The Lawsuit

William Doyle: "I'm ecstatic."

[Previous: Part 1: 28 Pages | Part 2: No Vortex]

Saudi Arabia and 9/11 have been in the news together recently for reasons other than the congressional resolution urging president Obama to release the 28 redacted pages pertaining to alleged Saudi involvement in the attacks of that day.

On Thursday, December 19, a three-judge federal panel reversed an earlier ruling which had granted Saudi Arabia immunity from a lawsuit filed in 2002 which claimed that in the years before the attacks, the Saudis had knowingly funded charities which were funneling the money to al-Qaeda. In 2005, a Manhattan district court ruled that Saudi Arabia was immune from prosecution because the kingdom had the right to finance the charities of its choice, and that ruling was upheld in 2008. But it was reversed on Thursday, and now Saudi Arabia has been restored as a defendant in the lawsuit.

The decision has received a modest amount of national coverage. ABC News [or here] summarized the decision and quoted "William Doyle, the father of Joseph Doyle, 25, a Cantor-Fitzgerald employee who was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center" as saying:

"I'm ecstatic.... For 12 years we've been fighting to expose the people who financed those bastards.... Christmas has come early to the 9/11 families. We're going to have our day in court."

I have no wish to rain on Mr. Doyle's Christmas. He has certainly been through enough. But I feel obliged to point out that he may be going after the wrong "bastards," or even the right "bastards" for the wrong reasons. After all, if the attack on the World Trade Center was not done with hijacked airplanes, but by some other means, then the question of who funded al-Qaeda takes on a much different significance, does it not?.

More detailed coverage was provided by a local sources in New York and (especially) Philadelphia, the latter being the home of Cozen O'Connor, the law firm representing the plaintiffs. Needless to say, there was no mainstream coverage from any point of view other than the presumption that al-Qaeda alone was responsible for all the death and destruction of 9/11. So, for example, at the New York Daily News [or here] we can read:

Relatives of people killed when hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field can now resume lawsuit against the Arabian kingdom.

The Daily News piece, by Daniel Beekman, features more quotes from William Doyle:

"I’m ecstatic, because we have a lot of information and evidence.... These people are getting off scot-free. They didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, and to this day we still have terrorism running rampant. We have to hold accountable the people who finance terrorism....

Beekman continues:

Doyle compared the role of Saudi Arabia to that of a mob boss hiring a hit man.

"Not only does the person who pulls the trigger go to jail, so does the person who financed him," Doyle said. "What’s different about this situation?"

One difference (to continue Doyle's analogy) is that in this case the victim appears to have died from something other than a gunshot wound. So the situation is quite messy: interesting, complicated, and dangerous in unexpected ways.

Stephen Cozen: "I think it is an
eminently correct decision"

Chris Mondics, writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer [or here], gives a bit more detail on the background:

Cozen O'Connor and several other law firms sued the government of Saudi Arabia, various Islamist charities, and alleged terrorism financiers in 2003, charging that they provided financial support to al-Qaeda over 10 years before the 9/11 attacks. The firms alleged that Saudi Arabia provided tens of millions of dollars to charities that in turn bankrolled al-Qaeda units in the Balkans, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Senior U.S. government officials warned Saudis before the 9/11 attacks that government-funded charities were bankrolling terrorist units, but, they said, the Saudis failed to react.

A federal district judge in Manhattan dismissed the Saudi government and members of the royal family as defendants in 2005, saying the government was within its right to finance the charities and was not responsible for what the charities might have done with the money.

That was upheld in 2008 by the Second Circuit. But the court said Thursday that it had decided to reverse its decisions because it had allowed a related lawsuit to go forward on the same grounds cited in the suit against the Saudis.

Mondics doesn't include any comments from William Doyle, but he does quote a couple of attorneys:

"I think it is an eminently correct decision," Stephen Cozen of Cozen O'Connor said of the Second Circuit's opinion restoring Saudi Arabia as a defendant. "The kingdom and the Saudi High Commission deserved to be back in the case as defendants, and we are prepared to meet any of their legal and factual arguments with substantial legal and factual arguments of our own."

John O'Neill, former head of
counterintelligence at the FBI

and

"It means that the Second Circuit realized that it had made a mistake and did what courts are expected to do, which is fix it," said Jerry S. Goldman, a Philadelphia lawyer with the firm Anderson Kill, who represents the estate of John O'Neill, a former head of counterintelligence at the FBI.

O'Neill, who was raised in Atlantic City, sounded some of the earliest warnings about Osama bin Laden. He was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, where he had gone to work as head of security after leaving the FBI only a few weeks earlier.

It goes without saying that the decision may complicate international relations:

Victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives have complained bitterly about the U.S. government's failure to turn over more information about its investigations of Saudi support for al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations.

They are pushing for legislation that would reduce protections afforded by U.S. law to foreign governments against such lawsuits. The Saudis, meanwhile, have complained that lawsuits have disrupted relations between the two governments.

Speaking of which, Mondics mentions another potential complication, and a very interesting one:

The decision marked the second advance in the last week for lawyers representing 9/11 victims, their families, and insurers that lost billions covering businesses and properties damaged or destroyed ... On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on an appeal by Cozen, asking for the reinstatement of another group of defendants - dozens of individuals and financial institutions accused of funneling money to al-Qaeda before the attacks. The request suggests that the court views the matter as having some importance and increases the odds that it may agree to hear the appeal.

This is interesting, and complicated, and (as I read it) very challenging to the Obama administration, because widespread public knowledge of just who has been funding al-Qaeda over the years would be as dangerous to "national security" as the contents of the 28 redacted pages.

[Next: The Cutouts]

Click here to join the discussion at the Winter Patriot community blog.

On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 2: No Vortex

A twin-engine plane leaves a
double vortex in its wake.

[Previous: Part 1: 28 Pages]

[UPDATED; see below]

In Part 1 we were discussing the December 9 piece called "9/11 Link To Saudi Arabia Is Topic Of 28 Redacted Pages In Government Report; Congressmen Push For Release" by Jamie Reno at International Business Times [or here]. In that article, Reno quotes Sharon Premoli, "a 9/11 survivor who was on the North Tower's 80th floor when the plane hit," as saying

"It makes me angry that I still don’t know what happened or who was supporting these hijackers."

There are many people who are angry because they still don't know what happened that day, some despite extensive personal efforts to find the truth of the matter. None of this is their fault. We've been hearing lies about these attacks ever since the day they happened. But hardly ever have we heard anything that could possibly be true.

So Sharon Premoli is quite correct to say, "I still don’t know what happened." In my view, her statement shows admirable courage and integrity. But, as I see it, to go on and talk about the "hijackers" is premature and speculative, irresponsible at best. I am becoming more and more convinced that all such talk is "barking up the wrong tree" in its entirety.

Dimitri Kalezov, in his remarkable book "9/11thology," dismisses the story that "hijacked planes crashed into the towers" very convincingly. If I may rephrase some of his strongest arguments:

But the fireball from the South Tower
just hung in the air.

[1] Eight of the 19 alleged "suicide hijackers" were found to be alive after the attack. They weren't even dragged from the rubble. They were already in foreign countries. Some claimed that their passports had been stolen. But clearly, if they had hijacked airplanes and crashed them into buildings in dramatic suicide attacks, they could not have been found alive later.

[2] Some of the "live video" supposedly depicting an airplane approaching and crashing into the South Tower has been shown to be fabricated (and the same can be said of some of the later video). Kalezov credits Ace Baker for his analysis, which proves beyond any doubt that the video is bogus. [For one example, see this video.] Clearly, if the crashes had been genuine, there would be no bogus video of the event.

[3] A turbofan engine spins at up to 30,000 RPM, creating a powerful vortex. So a twin-engine plane with turbofan engines leaves a double vortex in its wake. But the fireball from the South Tower, which we all saw many times, and which was allegedly caused by an airplane hitting the tower at 590 MPH, showed no disturbance in the air. As we could clearly see, the fireball just hung there. It didn't swirl or twist at all. The smoke from the burning North Tower was not affected in any way by the approach of the plane that supposedly hit the South Tower. So the air around both towers must have been quite still at the time. And therefore no turbofan-driven airplane could have been flying in the vicinity, in the seconds before the explosion. [See this video.]

The steel perimeter columns had walls two
inches thick, and aluminum cannot cut steel.

[4] The twin towers were built mostly of steel and concrete. Their frames were like cages; each face was a grid made of steel box girders with walls two inches thick. The vertical members of this grid were spaced only three feet apart. So for an airplane, which is essentially a hollow aluminum tube, to have burst into the building on impact, it would have had to cut through dozens of these girders, instantly and simultaneously.

But the "plane" that allegedly hit the North Tower supposedly entered the building "intact!" And that's not possible, because in any collision between a softer material and a harder one, the softer material suffers most, if not all, of the damage. Or, as Kalezov puts it,

aluminum projectiles can not penetrate steel targets even in theory

Here's an experiment you can try at home. Open a can of pop and drink the pop. Now throw the can at the door of a car, and observe how the can reacts on impact. Throw it as hard as you want; shoot it with a hockey stick; hit it with a baseball bat; fire it out of a cannon if you like; and pay attention to the results. In particular, does the can [a] bounce off the car door and land on the ground, somewhat deformed? Or does it [b] penetrate the car door and wind up inside the car? If you said [b], then commercial airplanes could possibly have pierced the frames of the World Trade Center towers. Otherwise not.

Therefore the planes
that crashed into the WTC
must have been digital.

If you said [a], the planes that crashed into the WTC were digital -- pixels on a screen and nothing more. This could be why so many of the people who supposedly hijacked those planes were still alive after the fact; maybe they were not killed in the collisions because there were no collisions. Maybe their role was not to hijack any planes, nor to destroy any buildings, but simply to take the blame.

If you are not now and have never been a "no-planer," this line of reasoning may cause you considerable discomfort. That's not your fault. You've been hearing lies about 9/11 ever since it happened. But if you fire enough pop cans at your car, you may find the situation somewhat easier to accept.

This line of reasoning is uncomfortable for me because it is so obvious! Of course aluminum cannot cut steel. It never has; it never will; and I should have been able to figure this out, twelve years ago, all by myself and without any help from Dimitri Kalezov.

And if the so-called "hijackers" were merely patsies, then in the days before 9/11, they may not have known anything at all about the attacks for which they were about to be blamed. So the search for those who helped them -- whoever they were, and whatever they thought they were doing -- takes on a much different aspect. But it is still an important search.

Clearly, anyone who gave the patsies support, and/or instructions, is implicated in the 9/11 attacks -- whatever they were. And by the same logic that indicates the patsies may have been unaware of the plan of attack, those who supported them may have had no knowledge of it themselves, aside from the specific tasks they were assigned to perform.

Any serious and honest investigation would concern itself with questions such as who assigned these tasks. It would not be satisfied with explanations that the individuals involved had no knowledge of the plan. And yet this appears to have happened.

[UPDATE: Most of what I wrote in this post has been challenged. And it could be wrong. I've been wrong before. For the challenge to this post, see this comment thread. And if you're curious, I was wrong about this story, at least for a while.]

[Next: Part 3: The Lawsuit]

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 1: 28 Pages

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah
[holding hands] with
George W. Bush

There's been a bit of a buzz building on Capitol Hill recently over a report issued back in 2002 concerning an investigation into 9/11. If you haven't read anything about it lately, it's probably not your fault. With very few exceptions, the report in question has not been mentioned in the mainstream news for more than ten years.

As you may vaguely remember, in the early days after 9/11, former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) chaired a Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry into the activites of certain intelligence agencies as they pertained to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Graham's inquiry resulted in an 800-page report, of which then-president George W. Bush held back 28 pages, claiming that the information they contained would be detrimental to national security. According to hints from sources who have read the report, the redacted pages concern a number of high-ranking Saudis who provided financial and other assistance to some of the "hijackers."

The Hill is slightly abuzz over this issue because earlier this year, representatives Walter B. Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) were allowed to read the 28 redacted pages, and earlier this month they introduced a resolution urging president Obama to release them to the public.

I have been reading about this sporadically from a very small variety of sources, beginning with Jamie Reno's December 9 article at International Business Times [or here], which says, among other things,

Most of the allegations of links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers revolve around two enigmatic Saudi men who lived in San Diego: Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, both of whom have long since left the United States.

In early 2000, al-Bayoumi, who had previously worked for the Saudi government in civil aviation (a part of the Saudi defense department), invited two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, to San Diego from Los Angeles. He told authorities he met the two men by chance when he sat next to them at a restaurant.

Newsweek reported in 2002 that al-Bayoumi’s invitation was extended on the same day that he visited the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles for a private meeting.

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan

Newsweek's 2002 report was called "The Saudi Money Trail" and you can read it at the Newsweek site [or here]. Other early reports worth reading include "Bush Won't Reveal Saudi 9/11 Info" from Lauren Johnston of AP via CBS [or here] and "Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role By Saudi Spies" by James Risen and David Johnston in the New York Times [or here]

Jamie Reno continues:

Al-Bayoumi arranged for the two future hijackers to live in an apartment and paid $1,500 to cover their first two months of rent. Al-Bayoumi was briefly interviewed in Britain but was never brought back to the United States for questioning.

As for Basnan, Newsweek reported that he received monthly checks for several years totaling as much as $73,000 from the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, and his wife, Princess Haifa Faisal. Although the checks were sent to pay for thyroid surgery for Basnan’s wife, Majeda Dweikat, Dweikat signed many of the checks over to al-Bayoumi’s wife, Manal Bajadr. This money allegedly made its way into the hands of hijackers, according to the 9/11 report.

Despite all this, Basnan was ultimately allowed to return to Saudi Arabia, and Dweikat was deported to Jordan.

Sources and numerous press reports also suggest that the 28 pages include more information about Abdussattar Shaikh, an FBI asset in San Diego who Newsweek reported was friends with al-Bayoumi and invited two of the San Diego-based hijackers to live in his house.

Shaikh was not allowed by the FBI or the Bush administration to testify before the 9/11 Commission or the JICI.

Reno also says:

Jones insists that releasing the 28 secret pages would not violate national security.

This tells me that Walter B. Jones does not understand what "national security" means. But that's probably not his fault. We've been hearing lies about "national security" ever since we were born.

We tend to think of "national security" as something involving the safety and security of the nation and its people -- ordinary people such as you and me and our families. And this is what our political system would like us to believe -- not because it's true, only because it makes us easier to manipulate. As it is actually used, "national security" refers to the survival and continuing tenure in office of those who use the term to justify their actions. More broadly, it also refers to the survival and continuing (or increasing!) wealth, status and privilege of those who currently enjoy such things.

As we have known for a long time, George W. Bush and his administration resisted every attempt to investigate 9/11, except for the belated whitewash which they felt they could control. And they used "national security" to prevent the release, not only of the infamous "28 pages" but of a wide variety of other information.

It doesn't take much guesswork to figure out why they did this. Clearly the information they censored must have threatened them, their position, and their supporters. They may no longer have their positions, but surely their supporters retain a stake in the matter. And unless I am badly misreading the situation, the Obama administration has far greater incentive to keep the 28 pages secret than to release them. But we shall see what happens. Unless we don't.

[Next: Part 2: No Vortex]

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

Federal Court Grants Immunity To Sponsors Of 9/11 Attacks

Three days ago I wrote:

A Federal court has ruled that some of the highest officials in our government are not accountable for their acts of treason, mass murder, war crimes, and crimes against humanity...

Did you get that? Do you finally get it now?

The terrorists have won. The federal courts are now ruling that they are all beyond the law.

No doubt the perpetrators of 9/11 will be afforded the same immunity.

That last bit was a cynical throwaway line, wasn't it?

No.

And it only took two days for the prediction to come true.

I hate when that happens.

Yesterday, according to Reuters, a federal court ruled that

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, four princes and other Saudi entities are immune from a lawsuit filed by victims of the September 11 attacks and their families alleging they gave material support to al Qaeda...

Why? Because foreigners are protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act unless their country is "designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department", and Saudi Arabia is not so designated. So there.

Criminal investigators say, "follow the money" because they know it will lead them to whoever sponsored the crime.

Criminals try to hide the money trail to prevent investigators from finding out what happened.

The US government has once again cut off an investigation into what really happened on 9/11.

That's why they use cutouts, so they can do things like this.

Connecting The 9/11 Dots: Dead Cutouts, Destroyed Tapes, And The Hidden Assumption That Poisons Everything

And this.

Inadequate Deception: The Impossible Plots Of The Terror War

And this.

Gatekeepers Bury Dancing Israeli Movers And Bogus Art Students On DN!

Care to comment on this post? If so, click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

Nuclear Proliferation To A Radical Islamic State? All Part Of The Job For BushCo

It seems almost impossible that the Bush administration, while threatening to wage war in order to prevent Iran from enriching uranium, could simultaneously give enriched uranium to another radical Islamic country.

Or perhaps I should rephrase that: If it seems impossible, you haven't been paying any attention at all.

But Chris Floyd has been paying close attention all along, and he has the goods on "Uranium Enrichment: The Bushes, The Saudis and The Bomb". It's a long piece, even by Floyd's standards. But it's well worth reading. Follow some of the links, too, for an education you won't soon forget.

One Tick Closer: Cheney Visits Saudi Arabia; Saudis Prepare To Radiate

Chris Floyd's site has been hacked too much; it's up again at the moment but who knows for how long?

In event of emergency, Chris will post at his original blogspot site, Empire Burlesque Now dot blogspot dot com.

Here, by kind permission of the author, is his latest piece.

Worried Yet? Saudis Prepare for "Sudden Nuclear Hazards" After Cheney Visit

I. One Tick Closer to Midnight

Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors," one of the kingdom's leading newspapers, Okaz, reports. The German-based dpa news service relayed the paper's story.

Simple prudence -- or ominous timing? We noted here last week that an American attack on Iran was far more likely -- and more imminent -- than most people suspect. We pointed to the mountain of evidence for this case gathered by scholar William R. Polk, one of the top aides to John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to other indicators of impending war. The story by Okaz -- which would not have appeared in the tightly controlled dictatorship without approval from the top -- is yet another, very weighty piece of evidence laid in the scales toward a new, horrendous conflict.

We don't know what the Saudis told Cheney in private -- or even more to the point, what he told them. But the release of this story now, just after his departure, would seem to be a clear indication that the Saudis have good reason to fear a looming attack on Iran's nuclear sites and are actively preparing for it.

II. A Nuclear Epiphany in Iran?

And they certainly should be bracing themselves. A U.S. attack on Iran will come suddenly, and if it is indeed aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities -- a "threat" being talked up again with new urgency by both Cheney and Bush lately -- it has the potential for unimaginable consequences. As we noted here in a previous piece:

Twelve hours. One circuit of the sun from horizon to horizon, one course of the moon from dusk to dawn. What was once a natural measurement for the daily round of human life is now a doom-laden interval between the voicing of an autocrat's brutal whim and the infliction of mass annihilation halfway around the world.

Twelve hours is the maximum time necessary for American bombers to gear up and launch an unprovoked sneak attack – a Pearl Harbor in reverse – against Iran, the Washington Post reports. The plan for this "global strike," which includes a very viable "nuclear option," was approved months ago, and is now in operation. The planes are already on continuous alert, making "nuclear delivery" practice runs along the Iranian border, as Sy Hersh reports in the New Yorker, and waiting only for the signal from President George W. Bush to drop their payloads of conventional and nuclear weapons on some 400 targets spread throughout the condemned land.

And when this attack comes – either as a stand-alone "knock-out blow" or else as the precusor to a full-scale, regime-changing invasion, like the earlier aggression in Iraq – there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no hearings, no public debate. The already issued orders governing the operation put the decision solely in the hands of the president: he picks up the phone, he says, "Go" – and in twelve hours' time, up to a million Iranians could be dead.

This potential death toll is not pacificist hyperbole; it comes from a National Academy of Sciences study sponsored by the Pentagon itself, as The Progressive reports. (Although Bush's military brass like to peddle the public lie that "we don't do body counts" of the enemy, in reality, like all good businessmen they keep precise accounts of their production outputs: i.e., corpses.) The Pentagon's NAS study calibrated the kill-rate from "bunker-busting" tactical nukes used to take out underground facilities – such as those which house much of Iran's nuclear power program.

Another simulation by scientists, using Pentagon-devised software, was even more specific, measuring the aftermath of a "limited" nuclear attack on the main Iranian underground site in Esfahan, the magazine reports. This small expansion of the Pentagon franchise would result in stellar production figures: three million people killed by radiation in just two weeks, and 35 million people exposed to dangerous levels of cancer-causing radiation in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Bush has about 50 nuclear "earth-penetrating weapons" at his disposal, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Nor is the idea of a nuclear strike on Iran mere "liberal paranoia." Bush himself pointedly refused to take the nuclear option "off the table" this week. But what's more, Bush has made the use of nuclear weapons a centerpiece of his "National Security Strategy of the United States," issued last month, The Progressive notes. While reaffirming the criminal principle of "pre-emptive" attacks on perceived enemies which may or may not be threatening America with weapons they may or may not possess, Bush declared that "safe, credible and reliable nuclear forces continue to play a critical role" in the "offensive strike systems" that are now a key part of America's "deterrence."

In the depraved jargon of atomic warmongering, a "credible" nuclear force is one that can and will be used in the course of ordinary military operations. It is no longer to be regarded as a sacred taboo. This has long been the dream of the Pentagon's "nuclear priesthood" and its acolytes, going back to the days of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For decades, a strong faction within the American power structure has been afflicted with a perverted craving to unleash these weapons once more. An almost sexual frustration can be discerned in their laments as time and again, in crisis after crisis, their counsels for "going nuclear" were rejected – often at the very last moment. To justify their abberant desire, they have relentlessly demonized an ever-changing array of "enemies," painting each one as an imminent, overwhelming threat, led by "madmen" in thrall to pure evil, impervious to reason, fit only for destruction. Evidence for the "threat" is invariably exaggerated, manipulated, even manufactured; this ritual cycle has been enacted over and over, leading to many wars – but never to that ultimate, orgasmic release.

Now this paranoid sect has at last seized the commanding heights of American power...they have found a most eager disciple in the peevish dullard strutting in the Oval Office. Under their sinister tutelage, Bush has eviscerated 40 years' worth of arms control treaties; officially "normalized" the use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear states; rewarded outlaw proliferators like India, Israel and Pakistan; and is now destroying the last and most effective restraint on the spread of nuclear weapons: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The treaty guarantees its signatories – such as Iran – the right to establish nuclear power programs in exchange for rigorous international inspections. But Bush has arbitrarily decided that Iran – whose nuclear program undergone perhaps the most extensive inspection process in history – must end its lawful activities. Why? Because the country is led by "madmen" in thrall to pure evil, impervious to reason, who one day may or may not threaten America with weapons they may or may not have....

So the NPT is dead. As with the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution, it now means only what Bush says it means. Force of arms, not rule of law, is the new world order. The attack on Iran is coming...The obvious, murderous insanity of such a move in no way precludes its implementation by this gang – as their invasion of Iraq clearly shows.

The nuclear sectarians have waited decades for this moment. Such a chance may never come again. Will they let it pass, when with just a word, in just twelve hours, they can see their god rising in a pillar of fire over Persia?

Click here for the article in its original context, with live links.

Connecting The 9/11 Dots: Dead Cutouts, Destroyed Tapes, And The Hidden Assumption That Poisons Everything

Destroyed Tapes

According to Gerald Posner at Huffington Post:

On December 5, the CIA's director, General Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement disclosing that in 2005 at least two videotapes of interrogations with al Qaeda prisoners were destroyed. The tapes, which the CIA did not provide to either the 9/11 Commission, nor to a federal court in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, were destroyed, claimed Hayden, to protect the safety of undercover operatives.

It was the lamest excuse in the world, but it got Posner riffing.

One of the al Qaeda suspects whose tapes were destroyed ... was Abu Zubaydah [photo], the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush ... mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name.

Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, "quite important."

Posner describes a ruse used by the Americans to get Abu Zubaydah to talk to them.

The wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them.

Are you with us so far? Abu Zubaydah was being protected by a high-level Saudi royal.

What does that mean? Maybe what you think, maybe not!

Here's Posner again:

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire.
...

Several hours after [Zubaydah] first fingered Prince Ahmed ... some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

Keep in mind that this is coming from Posner and the "Rosetta Stone" may need considerable translation after he gets through with it. Still, his report contains information of great interest. (And that's my emphasis, above and below.)

[Zubaydah] named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

Pay close attention now.

All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead.

What does that mean? Maybe not what you think.

Posner has more details:

As for the three Saudi princes, the King's 43-year-old nephew, Prince Ahmed, died of either a heart attack or blood clot, depending on which report you believe, after having liposuction in Riyadh's top hospital; the second, 41-year-old Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died the following day in a one car accident, on his way to the funeral of Prince Ahmed; and one week later, the third Saudi prince named by Zubaydah, 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, died, according to the Saudi Royal Court, "of thirst." The head of Pakistan's Air Force, Mushaf Ali Mir, was the last to go. He died, together with his wife and fifteen of his top aides, when his plane blew up -- suspected as sabotage -- in February 2003. Pakistan's investigation of the explosion -- if one was even done -- has never been made public.

The death of the third Saudi is particularly stunning. Not a lot of 25-year-old princes die of thirst.

Connecting The Dots

I've written once or twice in the past, incorrectly (as I now see it), that the unwritten rule of 9/11-related journalism in post-democratic America seems to be "You can point out as many 'dots' as you like, provided that you link them together with a false narrative."

I was wrong about the rule. A "false narrative" isn't good enough. You can point out as many 'dots' as you like, provided that you link them together with an acceptable false narrative.

For example ...

Peter Lance tells the shocking tale of Ali Mohamed, an al Qaeda agent who worked with Egyptian intelligence and then a succession of American national security agencies. As Lance describes it, Ali Mohamed was a brilliant enemy -- sharp enough to infiltrate all these top-level national security agencies! (Lance can't call it what it looks like: Ali Mohamed was an al Qaeda liaison to American and Egyptian intelligence).

Or think of Christopher Ketcham finally breaking into "the alternative media" (i.e. Counterpunch, Democracy Now!) with the story of the "dancing Israelis". These were the "employees of an Israeli moving company" who were caught photographing themselves celebrating the destruction of the twin towers on the morning of 9/11 -- and later turned out to be Mossad agents! As Ketcham tells it, and Alexander Cockburn pats himself on the back for it, the story finally "comes out" as "the Israelis were probably spying on the terrorists". (Well then why were they dancing? It looks a lot more like the Israelis were running the terrorists! But Ketcham cannot say that.)

Gerald Posner has been doing well so far, laying out the dots. But watch what happens next:

Zubaydah is the only top al Queda operative who has secretly linked two of America's closest allies in the war on terror -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- to the 9/11 attacks.

"You're getting hot!" as the kids would say.

Gerald Posner leads us to the very brink before he feels the heat:

Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military, from the implications of Zubaydah's confessions?

But then he gets out of the kitchen in a hurry, veering off into the realm of utter nonsense:

It is, or course, because the Bush administration desperately needs Pakistani and Saudi help, not only to keep Afghanistan from spinning completely out of control, but also as counterweights to the growing power of Iran. The Sunni governments in Riyadh and Islamabad have as much to fear from a resurgent Iran as does the Bush administration.

So there you go: a false narrative that's more ludicrous than it is plausible:

We were attacked by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan ... so we retaliated against Afghanistan and Iraq ... because we were afraid of Iran!!

Were Posner not so inclined to see all his dots through the official prism, he might not even ask

Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military?

... or having asked, he might answer in an entirely different way.

The Hidden Assumption

The hidden assumption is one everybody has to make, if they want to get published, although there is no evidence at all to support it. The assumption stays hidden by necessity; if any writer explained that his or her analysis were based on this assumption then critical readers (if any) might be inclined to request supporting evidence. And since no such evidence exists (and in fact a great deal of counter-evidence exists), the question would be somewhat inconvenient.

The problem with hidden assumptions in general, of course, is that if they're wrong, they can mess up everything that depends on them -- and, because they're hidden, you'd never know it. And that's just what's happened to our media -- even many very non-mainstream reporters buy into the hidden assumption.

If you have a hidden assumption and it's wrong, then when you go to connect the dots you will not be able to do so. You'll only get partway there, and you'll be left asking "unanswerable" questions like "Why does this happen?" and "What does that mean?"

In this case the unanswerable question is of the form "Why does X protect Y and Z?"

Without the hidden assumption, other observers -- people looking at the same dots but not through the same prism -- can see that X, Y and Z are cooperating quite nicely, thank you very much.

The hidden assumption that poisons all mainstream (and much "alternative") analysis is the idea that the Bush administration and the CIA didn't want 9/11 to happen.

If you just throw away the prism -- drop the hidden assumption and look at the dots on their own -- the picture gets a lot clearer.

Indeed it becomes quite apparent that Bush and the CIA continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military because they cooperate so nicely!

Dead Cutouts

The basic idea of a cutout is that it insulates and isolates the perpetrators from their dirty deed. Rather than do something yourself, you hire an operative to do it for you. Or even better, you get somebody else -- a cutout -- to hire him. Then the operative won't even know who he's working for, let alone why he's being asked to do whatever it is that you're asking him to do.

Once the job is done, it's easy to destroy the chain of evidence: if you can't eliminate the operatives, you simply eliminate the cutouts. Poof! Now there's no trail leading back to the perpetrators!

It's not all that complicated, and it's been done successfully many times before, so it's a poor investigator who ignores the possibility...

Not to be overly racist or anything, but white guys with Ivy League backgrounds can't exactly go to the Middle East and recruit terrorists. So they work at a distance -- by proxy -- through cutouts.

And it doesn't take much imagination to conceive the notion that the Pakistani military and Saudi royals would make fabulous cutouts. It's almost impossible to overestimate the plausibility of the denial they can provide. Who would ever guess that the terrorists were actually working for the Americans? Not even most "intelligence analysts"!

Well, some might guess, eventually ... but not many ... and it would take them a long time ... and by then it might already be too late ... because the chain of evidence can be so easily broken ... well, guess what?

Pay close attention now:

All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead.

The cutouts are gone; the trail is dead; long live the usurpers!

One End Or The Other

But the trail is not so dead after all. You can still follow it, from one end or the other.

You can start in Washington. People who don't want certain things to happen don't react with statements like "Lucky me, I hit the trifecta" when they do happen. Not even once. Certainly not over and over.

Or you can start in Saudi Arabia. If you look at the visa applications served up by the 9/11 terrorists, you can see how much inside help they were expecting. And the help they were expecting -- the help they got -- wasn't coming from the Saudis.

Essential insight into Saudi "complicity" comes from Mike Springmann, who spent many years working for the State Department. For eighteen months he was the visa officer at the American Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. There, Springmann did the required short and sweet interviews with visa applicants. Some of them fell far short of meeting the requirements and Springmann would refuse them visas. And every now and then -- even though the final decision was supposed to be his -- he would be overruled.

Springmann came to find out that almost everyone in the Consulate at Jeddah was either working for the Clandestine Service or else married to someone who was. Intelligence infiltration of diplomatic stations is commonplace, of course, but Springmann says it was "all but three" out of "about 20" at one point, and such overwhelming numbers are very unusual.

Springmann was being overruled because the CIA was recruiting terrorists throughout the Middle East and sending them (via Jeddah) to the US for training, before inserting them into Afghanistan (via Pakistan).

The same system could have been used to insert terrorists into the US for an operation, couldn't it?

But the system described by Springmann is no longer in service, so there's no need to be concerned. Right? Wrong! They've changed it since Springmann's time, making it even easier to get wannabe-terrorists into the USA.

Here's how it works now: If the applicant comes through Jeddah via a trusted travel agency, there's no need for an interview. All such applications are granted.

In other words,

Dear Terrorist: Welcome to the USA, and have a nice flight!!

Mike Springmann explained to Alex Jones how it works:

Mike Springmann: According to the Los Angeles Times, fifteen of the nineteen people, the Saudis who were allegedly responsible for flying planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, they got their visas from the Consulate at Jeddah. Now, according to a journalist I know in Florida, this was done through a new wrinkle in the visa procedures there. At the time I was running the visa section, I personally interviewed at least one member of the family or just about everyone who wanted to travel to the States. They had switched things so that the [visa applications] would be submitted, in many instances, through travel agencies, that were approved by the Consulate. And, according to a conversation that I had had with [former Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Special Agent] Celerino Castillo, some years ago, on an article I was researching, it was old agency ploy to put passports of his people in with legitimate trade groups or travel groups coming from travel agencies and send them to the Consular section.

Alex Jones: Couldn’t somebody, if it’s just a name at a travel desk or a travel agency, just show up with a fake ID and then board?

Mike Springmann: Yeah, you could do that. The way it was explained to me is that they would go to the travel agency and say I want to go to the United States - either get me a visa, I have to visit relatives there, I have business there, etc. And they would simply send a package of passports and visa applications over to the Consular section. And because they came from a reputable source, people didn’t look too closely at it, I guess.

The retaliation against Mike Springmann for speaking this freely has been unusual; and the careers of the people who were overruling him have been unusual too. You can read more about all of this at my new "other" blog, "Visas For Terrorists: Springmann of Arabia", where I have been busy squirreling away articles by and about Mr. Springmann as well as documents supporting what he's said in those articles.

After a while the unusual begins to seem a bit more explicable. After a while, the hidden assumption becomes visible, and at that point it falls away -- pulled down by the weight of its own absurdity.

Or as Springmann himself says:

Face the Facts, Stupid ... It’s Government Policy

~~~

[further reading]

Springmann: A Sin Concealed – The Visas for Terrorists Program

Springmann: WHEN YOU PASS "GO", YOU COLLECT MORE BODIES

NRO : Visas that Should Have Been Denied

Springmann: Consul General Filled Out Visa Applications For Pakistanis With Forged Passports

[and much much more at]

Visas For Terrorists: Springmann of Arabia